Table of Contents

Jury Verdicts Database for Cook County, Illinois, and All Counties in California, 1960-1984 (ICPSR 6232)

Principal Investigator(s):Dunworth, Terence; Pace, Nicholas

Summary:

This data collection contains information on jury verdict
civil cases in Cook County, Illinois, and all counties in California.
The RAND Corporation's Institute for Criminal Justice began this study
in the early 1980s in response to widespread public interest in the
magnitude of dollar verdicts returned in civil cases. The goal was to
record salient information found in court reporter publications to
allow for a wide range of future research. Two such publications were
chosen ... (more info)

This data collection contains information on jury verdict
civil cases in Cook County, Illinois, and all counties in California.
The RAND Corporation's Institute for Criminal Justice began this study
in the early 1980s in response to widespread public interest in the
magnitude of dollar verdicts returned in civil cases. The goal was to
record salient information found in court reporter publications to
allow for a wide range of future research. Two such publications were
chosen because of their favorable reputations and because they both
dated back to 1960: the "Cook County Jury Verdict Reporter" of
Chicago, Illinois, and "Jury Verdicts Weekly" of Santa Rosa,
California. The collection of data for this study was conducted in two
phases. Phase I included cases from 1960-1979, and Phase II coded cases
from 1980-1984, including a small number of cases from 1985. In both
phases, only cases in which a jury reached a definitive outcome
(including deadlocked or hung juries) were included. In Phase I, only
San Francisco County cases from the California reporter publication
were included. In Phase II, all California counties were included. For
all cases in Phase I, a Main Form was completed that included
jurisdiction, court type, dates of incidents and trial, information
about parties involved, trial occurrences, outcome of trial, awards,
and fees. In addition to this Main Form, at least one of nine different
case-type forms was completed: Common Carrier-Passenger Form, Dram Shop
Form, Injuries on Property/Attractive Nuisance Form, Malpractice Form,
Miscellaneous Form, Products Liability Form, Street Hazards/Highway
Construction Form, Traffic/Pedestrian/Rider Form, and Work Injuries and
FELA Form. These forms contained questions regarding the behavior of
each party in the case and other characteristics and facts relevant to
the case. A Jury Verdicts Form was completed for all cases in Phase II.
This form picked up general case-level and defendant-specific data such
as dates and length of trial, case outcome, original number of parties
involved, and collapsing of multiple defendants into one case. For each
plaintiff, a Plaintiff Information Form was filled out containing
general plaintiff information such as losses claimed and the coder's
assessment of the degree of the plaintiff's comparative negligence.
This form also indicated which of the loss forms was coded for this
plaintiff (only one loss form was completed for each plaintiff): Death
Action, Personal Injuries, or Money Damages. Each form contained basic
information about the outcome of the case, specific damages claimed by
the plaintiff, and loss-specific data. Additionally, an Ancillary
Action Form was completed for any associated claims that were
adjudicated at the time of the main case, such as counter-suits by
defendants. The questions on this form were the same as those on the
main Jury Verdicts Form. Finally, this study includes an Integrated
Jury Verdicts Database (Part 33) containing data from both phases to
permit easier analysis of data from all years. This database contains
five sections: (1) the basic trial information, which includes the
trial dates and lengths, reporter source, and jurisdiction, (2) the
main case information, which includes more detailed data about the case
such as number of parties involved, case type, types of losses claimed,
and total compensatory and punitive awards, (3) information about the
first ancillary action, (4) information about the second ancillary
action, and (5) a listing of all the forms used.

Access Notes

These data are freely available.

Dataset(s)

WARNING: This study is over 150MB in size and may take several minutes to download on a typical internet connection.

Scope of Study

Universe:
All civil cases ending with trial by jury in Cook County,
Illinois, or California.

Data Types:
administrative records data

Methodology

Sample:
San Francisco cases found in "Jury Verdicts Weekly"
published from 1960 to 1979, and all cases published from 1980 to
mid-1985, one out of every four traffic, pedestrian, or common carrier
cases in the "Cook County Jury Verdicts Reporter" published from 1960
to 1979, plus all other cases in those issues, and one out of every
four traffic or common carrier cases in the "Cook County Jury Verdicts
Reporter" published from 1980 to mid-1985, plus all other cases in
those issues.

Data Source:

Cook County, Illinois, and California county court
records

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1994-10-19

Version History:

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 35 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.